EDOUARD MANET (1832-83)

If you go down deep into the woods today,
Forget the picnic, you’re in for a big surprise:
They’re in the shade with only a suggestion of sky.
They regard you coolly, you wonder if it’s all it implies,
Redden and look deep down into that redhead’s eyes,
Reflecting whether you’re here to play, or merely prey.

A little nervously you knock, enter the boudoir

To meet that nerveless, full-on gaze so steady.
You note the heels, her left hand feigning modesty
Or simply waiting to see the colour of your money
As she turns from your black flower-girl, she’s ready;
And it’s time now to enquire of yourself, if you are.

You look down on her, but she looks down on you too,

Between the mirror’s crowded blur and the bar’s clutter,
With her sad eyes and a mouth that would melt butter.
You’re lost for words struggling in vain to utter
As she waits patiently for you to just press the shutter;
Beautifully bored, she stands and stares straight through you.
  
The lacy ladies on the balcony smile sweetly for Goya,
But you’re uneasy with those behind in the shadows
As you watch your own version gather and compose,
Your ladies expecting rain as light fades and time slows.
Meanwhile, Magritte’s coffins wait on the day to close.
Do you confess now to a growing sense of paranoia?

Envoi

This man with a beard and boater, who turns on his chair

At the window, watching the girls in the summer blue
Beyond the garden fence, in the middle of the view,
Is your brother, painted by his wife: he looks like you;
But you fade now into a darker, decomposing blue
As the boats pass you by in the sweet, poisoned air.

(2015)

Each of the first four stanzas focus on a particular Manet painting. Sequentially, they are:-

The Luncheon On The Grass (pictured); Olympia; Bar At The Folies Bergere and The Balcony. The first two were highly controversial, although Olympia had notable antecedents in Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, Titian’s Venus  Of Urbino and Goya’s The Naked Maja. The fourth was also ‘after Goya’ and before Magritte’s surrealist version; it also features - sat left in the foreground – Manet’s sister-in-law and fellow artist, Berthe Morisot – who painted Eugene Manet On The Isle Of Wight. This is the picture which relates to the final stanza – it was completed in 1875,by which time Edouard Manet’s health was in terminal decline due mainly to syphilis.